When the rich peasant heard of this, he came to the poor man’s courtyard, tasted the beer, and began to ask the poor man: “Please to tell me how ever you managed to make such magnificent beer?”
“Oh, there was not any cleverness about it,” the poor man answered. “It is the simplest thing in the world. When I took your three pecks from you I simply went and threw them into the well. Formerly it was water, and in a single night it all became beer.”
“Well,” the rich man thought, “I will go home and I will do the same.”
So he went home, and he ordered all of his servants to take all of the best malt out of his granaries, and throw it into the well. And his husbandmen threw ten sacks of malt into the well.
“Now,” the rich man said, and rubbed his hands, “I shall have finer beer than the poor man.”
So the next time he went out to his courtyard and up to the well, sampled it, and looked. It was water before, and it was still water; only it was rather dirtier. “I don’t quite understand this: I put too little malt into it, so I will add some more,” the rich man thought, and he ordered his workmen to put five more sacks into the well. They were all thrown in, and it was all no good: he had simply wasted all of his malt.
And when the feast had passed by the water in the poor peasant’s well was as pure as ever, just as if nothing had happened.
Once again the old man came to the poor peasant and said: “Listen, master, have you sown your corn this year?”
“No, grandfather, I have not sown a single grain.”
“Well, now go to the rich man and ask him for three pecks of every kind of corn. We will eat with you in the fields, and we will then sow the corn.”